The Genealogy Center, like all agencies of the Allen County Public Library, will be closed on Sundays for the summer, May 25, 2014, through August 31, 2014. Except for July 4th, we will be open the rest of the summer, 9A to 9P on Mondays through Thursdays, and 9A to 6P on Fridays and Saturdays.

The Genealogy Center, like the other Allen County Public Library facilities, will be closed Monday, May 26th, in observance of Memorial Day. We are also closed Sunday, May 25th, as that starts the summer Sunday closing. We will be open Saturday, May 24th, 9A to 6P, and Tuesday 9A to 9P.

The Amish are a visible part of the rural community in northern Allen County, Indiana, and indeed throughout northeastern Indiana. Because this sect does not keep church records and has little written history, their story has not been told to any great extent. Some time ago, Josiah Beachey discovered in an attic a forgotten trove of historical letters, written in German, from various Amish congregations dating from 1848 to 1925. Many of the letters are connected to Peter Graber (1811-1896), an Old Order Amish bishop who moved from Stark County, Ohio, and established the sect in Allen County in the mid-nineteenth century. In translating these letters and bringing them into print in his book, The Peter Graber Collection (Hicksville, Ohio: The Author, 2012), GC 977.201 AL5grp, Beachey lifts the veil, at least a little, on the history of the Amish community.

Letters in the book pertain to Amish communities in the following locations: Stark, Fulton and Wayne counties, Ohio; Adams, Lagrange, Daviess, Allen, and Howard counties, Indiana; and Johnson and Henry counties, Iowa. Some of the letters bear the signatures of multiple men, apparently elders in a particular congregation. They contain words of advice and encouragement and include the names of many congregation members, some of whom had committed various infractions. Sometimes the letters offer a glimpse into how the Amish coped with historical events outside of their control. For example, during the Civil War after the establishment of a draft, Peter Graber wrote from Allen County on 5 January 1864: “Precious children, now I want to let you know about the draft up to the present date, and no one knows what is going to happen, for one says they are going to start drafting today, others say they have put it off for 20 days, others say they won’t draft at all. So no one really knows what is going to happen.”

Other letters deal with issues of church governance. Jacob Schwartzentruber of Johnson County, Iowa, wrote to Graber, “How many levels of confession or punishment do you have in your church?” He then outlines the steps for penance, including asking for pardon, standing up and making a public confession, and “the highest confession, on your knees, and taken with a handshake and the kiss of peace.”

This volume makes an interesting addition to our collection of congregational histories and offers insights that deserve closer reading and attention.

The family always said your great-grandmother’s maiden name was “O’Toole.” But was it really? Have you collected documents about her that would list her maiden name, such as her marriage license, death certificate, obituary, or her children’s marriage licenses, birth and death certificates, and so on? You might be surprised to find out that her surname was listed as “Towle” instead, which sounds similar and could be a variant spelling. Or maybe she had a first marriage to someone named O’Toole, rather than that being her maiden name. These are some of the many reasons why you should try to confirm the first and last names you have been given by viewing official records about your ancestor, especially those where she would have been present at the time of the record creation (like her marriage license).

This happened recently to one of our patrons, when she learned that a family story was not quite correct. She told me her great-grandmother’s maiden name was “Nancy Delong”*. She was interested in finding Nancy’s parents, but had looked in all the counties in which Nancy had lived with her husband and found no one with the Delong surname. She wondered aloud to me if Nancy might have dropped out of an alien space ship, or just why else she couldn’t find her. When this happens, it's a red flag that something is wrong (besides an impending alien invasion)! The answer could be one of several possibilities:
1. The spelling of the name could be off, a little or a lot, in the records; perhaps because the name was misspelled, the handwriting was unreadable, or the same name night be spelled differently, such as Smith vs. Smythe.
2. The reported name of the family is incorrect.
3. The family may have changed their name – but this happened very infrequently.
4. They were in a different location than expected.
5. The family IS there in the expected records, even though the patron reported being unable to find them, indicating that the patron needs more education in how to search in that databases or source.

To find out what was going on in this case, we chatted about the patron’s ancestor further and in the course of that conversation, I asked her several questions:
1. How did she know Nancy’s maiden name? She said it was passed down through the family. Had she verified this information with official records? No. (Red flag!)
2. Where had her great-grandparents had married? She thought it was in Knox County, Indiana. I advised her to try to locate the marriage record, as that is the simplest way to learn a woman’s maiden (or previous married) name.

When she found the marriage record, the name was spelled “De Lorngne.” Aha! If the name was verbally passed along in the family, this name is similar-sounding to Delong, depending on pronunciation and regional accents. Do we know which one was her actual maiden name at this point? No, but finding more records about Nancy should clarify it further. A search of Nancy’s children’s marriage records seemed to confirm that Nancy’s maiden name was Delorgne, but with several more variant spellings. All those were noted, so that when the patron looks for this family in further records, she will have a list of alternate spellings to search under. This, as well as learning to search effectively in genealogy databases, will help make her search more successful. For example, to find records in the Ancestry database under all the variations of this family’s surname, she should search using the “Soundex” and “Phonetic” options; under both names, DeLong and DeLornge (which are not Soundex equivalents); and with and without a space between the De and L.

Back to the hunt for Nancy’s parents: Armed with the new version of the surname and list of alternate spellings, the patron was able to search more creatively in the census and find a possible brother living nearby to Nancy and her husband in Illinois. He had the same birth state listed as Nancy did (New Jersey) and the same uncommon surname, so it seems promising that they might be related. More research should be done to confirm or deny this theory, while continuing the search for Nancy’s parents.
Have you looked and looked for your ancestor under the name you were given for that person, and come up empty? Is it possible that the name you were given was wrong or that you are not searching effectively to find all possibilities? When you think creatively, ask for help, and learn better search techniques, you can break through many a brick wall!

Happy Mother’s Day! For many children, this is the day you call, send a card or take your mother a gift. If you are a mother, this is the day your small children bring flowers from your garden and your adult children brave every other family in the country to take you out to eat. But Mother’s Day actually has an interesting history with roots in the Civil War.

Ann Reeves was born in Virginia in 1832. She married Granville Jarvis in 1850 and moved to what is now West Virginia. Over the next seventeen years, the couple had about a dozen children, although, due to childhood diseases, only four lived to adulthood. In 1858, Ann established Mothers’ Day Work Clubs in towns in her area to promote sanitation and combat disease. During the Civil War, Ann encouraged the Clubs to maintain neutrality, providing aid to both armies. After the war, the Clubs promoted a renewal of friendship between former enemies.

Elsewhere in the country, temperance groups were also promoting a day to honor mothers who should band together to fight the demon liquor, but they had no connections specifically to Ann’s activities. In her later years, Ann continued her activities promoting health and sanitary conditions, as well as being active in other social causes to educate children and improve their lives. As a widow, she moved to Philadelphia to be near her children, and died there on May 8,1905.

Two years later, Ann’s daughter Anna Jarvis, organized a private memorial service for her mother, and in 1908, two public services were held. One was in the Andrews Methodist Church, where Ann taught Sunday School for many years, and the other, attracting 15,000 attendees, was held in Philadelphia’s Wanamaker Store Auditorium.

In the following years, Anna continued to promote a day to recognize mothers and their contribution to civilization, and to promote peace by honoring women who had lost or were at risk of losing sons in military conflicts. In 1914, Woodrow Wilson established the second Sunday in May as an official day of observance in honor of women whose sons had perished in war.

One early tradition was the giving and wearing of flowers by mothers: red if the wearer’s mother was still alive, white if the wearer’s mother was deceased. In recent years, pink flowers were worn by pregnant women.

Mother’s Day is celebrated all over the world, but not always on the second Sunday of May. It’s March 8 in many Eastern European countries, and the fourth Sunday in Lent in Great Britain and Ireland. It’s celebrated on the vernal equinox (March 21) in many Arabian countries, and the end of May or early June in France, the third Sunday of October in Argentina, the last Sunday of November in Russia, and, like the US, the second Sunday of May in Australia.

My own mother is gone now, although she received from me the requisite white corsage for many years. Now, I take the second Sunday of May to remember her, my grandmothers, my great-grandmothers and all of the wonderful women on my family tree. You know, half of my ancestors are mothers!

Thanks to the efforts of the members of the Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana, we now have the Lindenwood Cemetery Index up to include 2013! Lindenwood is one of the largest and oldest cemeteries in Allen County with burials starting in 1860, and is listed on the National Historic Register. Many local pioneers and settlers are buried here including members of the Hanna and Hamilton families, as well as a few infamous folks, such as Homer Van Meter, but it’s the everyday ancestors whose citations can really help local family historians. Thanks to ACGSI for this great update!

Do you have plans for celebrating Cinco do Mayo? Like St. Patrick’s Day, one doesn’t have to actually have the appropriate heritage to participate in Cinco de Mayo festivities! But what are you actually commemorating?

By 1861, following the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, the Mexican Civil War of 1858 and the Reform Wars of 1860, the Mexican territory was in dire financial straits, and placed a hold on paying off foreign debts. Britain, Spain and France all sent naval forces to compel payments. The British and Spanish negotiated with Mexico and returned home, but the French, seeing an opportunity to gain influence in the Western Hemisphere, landed a large French contingent at Vera Cruz, forcing President Benito Juarez and his government to retreat. The French fought their way to Puebla, near the Mexican forts of Guadalupe and Loreto. There, on May 5 (Cinco de Mayo), 1862, the Mexican army of about 4500 faced and defeated the 8000-strong French. But one battle did not win the war, and the Mexicans continued to resist the French invaders until 1867, when high ranking French leaders of the invasion were executed and Juarez reestablished his government.

Cinco de Mayo is not “Mexican Independence Day,” nor is it even a national holiday in Mexico. Mexico’s actual Independence Day, September 16th, celebrates the beginning of Mexico’s War of Independence in 1810, and is the national holiday in Mexico.

Cinco de Mayo has been celebrated by the Latino community in California since the mid-1800s, and spread to other Hispanic communities in the western United States. It began to become more popular in the rest of the U.S. in the mid-twentieth century, but really gained popularity when various companies promoted it as a holiday. Now, while it’s still marketed as a time for anyone to party, it’s also used as a vehicle to highlight Mexican history and culture. So, go ahead and enjoy the fiesta!

The month of May. For many it signals the end of the school year and the start of summer, genealogy travel and other, less important vacations. But the first day of May has a long tradition of festivals and feasts, starting in the pre-Christian era with the Germanic festival Walpurgis and the Celtic Beltane. Both celebrate spring and planting with bonfires to banish the long winter nights and dancing around a Maypole (Maibaum in Germany), and the crowning of a May Queen in Britain. As these lands became Christianized, the Church tried to associate May 1 with the Virgin Mary, but for many it remained a secular holiday to celebrate the fertility of the land, the flocks and the people. And in early England, May 1 was the first day of summer, with June 21, the Solstice, celebrated as Midsummer, when planting was finished.

Although traditions were similar, many regions added specific regional touches, such as Bulgaria’s Irminden, which is associated with protection from lizards and snakes, and Arminden in Romania, celebrated to insure the protection of crops, farm animals and people.

Settlers in the United States and Canada handed down their own traditions to their descendants, although in Canada it may be celebrated later in the month, as the weather warms. May baskets, filled with flowers and candy and left for the recipient to find, became popular in some areas of the United States.

May 1 was also chosen as International Workers’ Day to commemorate the Haymarket Massacre of 1886 in Chicago, and is celebrated as Labor Day in many countries. It is also associated with the Russian Revolution of 1917.

So think about your ancestors today. They may have crowned a Queen of May, either Catholic or agricultural. Maybe they danced around the Maypole to celebrate fertility or just have a good time. They could have demonstrated for an 8-hour work day or rejoiced the coming of spring. Or a bonfire might have been lit, to drive away winter or just barbecue some ribs. Take a few moments to celebrate May Day.

Sometimes a book that at first glance would not seem a perfect fit for The Genealogy Center has value to historians and genealogists alike and is, on closer examination, a welcome addition to our collection. Jill Lepore’s new biography of Jane (Franklin) Mecom (1712-1794), Benjamin Franklin’s younger sister, is a case in point. Titled Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), GC 973.3 L55bo, the book is the first such biography of Jane, whose ordinary life in eighteenth-century Boston was greatly overshadowed by that of her more famous brother. Some of the tools that Lepore uses to reconstruct Jane’s life could be employed by anyone undertaking micro-historical research during this time period, including genealogists.

I’ve become an unabashed fan of Jill Lepore, a professor of American History at Harvard and the author of a number of books, including, among others, New York Burning, a history of the New York Slave Rebellion of 1741, and The Name of War, a history of King Philip’s War, both of which are also in The Genealogy Center’s collection. Other titles in the library’s main collection reveal the author’s keen intellect and often acerbic wit as she relates modern and often-distorted perceptions the past with the complex nuances of the historical record.

Lepore begins her biography of Jane Franklin with a study of Jane’s so-called Book of Ages, a bound manuscript in which she recorded the births and deaths of members of her family, much the way other families would record such events in a family Bible. Lepore assembles a chronological narrative using this book and Jane’s extant correspondence with her brother to fill in the details. Jane was an avid reader, a person with strong opinions about current events, but also a person who, in contrast to her brother, often lived in humble circumstances. Hence this work gives us a glimpse of an average person in the eighteenth century, perhaps in some ways not unlike our own ancestors. Jane followed a trade by making soap, using a family recipe. She advertised in the local newspapers and attended church. She endured the mental instability and economic failure of her husband and sons. She mourned the passing of nearly all of her children and many of her grandchildren during a life that spanned almost the whole of the eighteenth century.

Even with the surviving correspondence, there are many gaps in Jane’s life that Lepore fleshes out using other records, including local newspapers, published sermons of ministers associated with Jane’s church, and other writings from contemporaries. Lepore also uses the tenacity of a genealogist in attempting to locate missing letters in the private collections of her descendants and determining what other papers may have gone to family acquaintances after her death. Indeed, this search for direct evidence – and how some of Jane’s letters were bowdlerized by later Franklin scholars thereby altering her original expressions – is as intriguing as the story of her life. Lepore not only includes a brief genealogy of Jane’s family in her appendix, she also writes of the interest that both Benjamin and Jane shared in genealogical research. Franklin at one time visited their ancestral home in Ecton, Northamptonshire, where he copied the epitaphs of his ancestors. Later, in old age, he asked Jane to share what she knew about their extended kindred in New England, which Jane appeared to relish in compiling. Interest in one’s ancestors and kindred, it seems, did not germinate in the nineteenth century. For these and other reasons, including Lepore’s writing style and the process of her meticulous research, genealogists and historians alike will find Book of Ages a fascinating read.

The week starts on Sunday, April 27, with Heirloom Succession Planning, presented by Amy Beatty, C.E.S., G.P.P.A. She will show you how to create an accurate cataloging and historical system of your family’s personal property as an addendum or supplement to a will, helping to recognize items in terms of sentimental rather than financial value, while preserving family history. The session starts at 1 PM in Meeting Room A.

On Monday, April 28, Curt Witcher will present ‘To Infinity and Beyond:’ Ensuring Our Family Histories Live Well Beyond Our Years. He will focus on how to organize and prepare one’s paper archive for deposit in a library or archive as well as how to ensure that digitized materials in cloud storage spaces are successfully handed-off to interested parties or institutions. The fun starts at 2 PM in Meeting Room A.

John Beatty follows that on Tuesday, April 29 with Archives 101: Organizing and Preserving the Heirloom Paper in Your Life, to offer guidance on how to preserve and arrange those precious documents so that they can be kept safe for today and passed down to the future. Be there, 2 PM, Meeting Room A.

You've worked with paper, now what about the digital material that you have? On Wednesday, April 30, Sara Allen will offer Archives 102: Organizing the Bytes in Your Life. This class will offer advice on how to get all of that precious data on your hard drive, USB and phone safe and in order for when you need it. Buzz on in at 2 PM in Meeting Room A.

We're really excited about An Evening of Storytelling on Thursday, May 1.
Telling the stories in our lives is not only a great way to engage people in learning their about their families and ancestors, it is a terrific way to “pass it on.” Several members of the area community will show us how easy it is, and , we hope, inspire you to participate at a later date. The show starts at 6:30 PM in Meeting Rooms A&B.

On Friday, May 2, Mari Hardacre will be Using iMovie to Capture Family Memories. Sh will show you how to use the iMovie app for Apple mobile devices to take photos and videos and edit them into short movies to share with family and friends. Please bring your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad running the latest operating system (iOS 7) and download the iMovie app (cost $4.99) before the workshop, if possible. (Please call 260-421-1225 in advance to let her know your model and operating system.) She'll get you plugged in at 2 PM in Meeting Room A.

Then on Saturday, May3, Cynthia Theusch will present Up in Lights: Your Family History on Screen. Why not create a special video that can be saved to a DVD and distributed to family members? Even non-genealogists and children will enjoy watching your family story and learning about their family’s past. The action will start at 10 AM in the Globe Room.

So make some time this week to preserve your heritage, and Pass It On!

When you check The Genealogy Center's Catalog, you usually find a list of books with call numbers or a list of microform indicating the number of rolls or sheets in that document. Occasionally, there will be a hot link to a digitized version of our print volume at Family History Books or Internet Archive. But now, there's something new!

We are lucky that researchers donate material to us. Over the years, people have donated large family tree wall charts. We accepted these items, because we could see the historical value, but folding them to bind into book form would damage the chart, and the cost of binding them in their original sizes was prohibitive, so how to handle them was always a quandary. But now, thanks to our digitizing partners, like Internet Archive, when you search the catalog now, in place of the call number, you may see the word "Website." Click on the hot link and you will be taken to a digitized image. Printing from the image would result in an extremely small view, but you can save the item to a USB and take that to a place that can print posters to obtain a full sized copy. Click example to see one of these catalog records, and its link, and be on the lookout for more online documents!

Over the next few weeks and months, three major religions celebrate very important holidays: Easter on April 20th, Passover on April 22nd and Ramadan starts June 28th. Whether you are a member of these faiths, a different faith, or none at all, chances are that some of your ancestors have some religious affiliation, practiced those religious customs, and were active in religious related activities.

Some families have strong ties to their faith, passing it down through the generations. Other families seem to join, and abandon religious ties with each move or new generation. This loss of knowledge can be detrimental to family history researchers. Religious records of the past can supply needed information when a courthouse has burned. But knowing the religious beliefs and activities of our ancestors can add a tremendous depth of knowledge to understanding our progenitors.

So take some time to ask living relatives to recount faith-based activities from their youth. Ask what they remember of their own parents’ and grandparents’ beliefs and practices. And record your own faith activities for future generations.

We all want to find birth records for our ancestors – nice, neat little forms that will precisely state the child’s name and birth date and place, along with the parents’ names. If we’re lucky, parents’ ages, occupations and birth places, the child’s weight and length, and the number of children the mother had already had might also be included. Alas, many states did not keep birth records until around the turn of the twentieth century, and even then, children born at home might not be registered with the county.

There are many substitutes for birth records, but one that is a contemporary source created by the person who delivered the child, is the midwife’s record. Midwives records varied by the midwife herself, and most often contained the medical or financial notes of her practice, naming the mother, the father who would be financially responsible for fees, and medical notes on the birth. Some midwives also served in the role of doctor or nurse, so other injuries, illnesses and deaths may also be noted.

Few of these records still exist, since when midwives ceased practice, their families often disposed of the records. But some did survive and may be available through various sources. The Genealogy Center has several of these records, in books and on microfilm. These are listed in the book catalog under the midwife’s name as well as the location in which she lived and practiced, or in the microtext catalog, under the location. Some records may also be found in the Periodical Source Index (PERSI), also under the midwife’s name, as well as the location, with the keyword “midwife.”

It is also possible to locate midwives’ records through WorldCat’s advanced search, with a subject of “midwives,” and another subject of the location. You may wish to limit the format to “books” and “archived material” to be sure to locate material that may only be available in one particular location.

Although searching WorldCat will aid you in locating manuscript material, you will also want to contact local and state historical societies and libraries to see if they hold any of these valuable sources.

The Genealogy Center, like the rest of the Allen County Public Library system, will be closed on Sunday, April 20, 2014, in observance of Easter. We will be open our regular hours on Friday and Saturday, April 18th and 19th, and will reopen on Monday, April 21st at 9A.

Researching female ancestors can be difficult. Women usually lost their birth surnames when they married, and were often only referred as "Mrs. Husband's Name." Women couldn't vote until the 1920s, and usually were not naturalized. But there are many "hidden" sources that can assist you in understanding the laws and situations that affected whether or not she might be named in various documents and other clues that will be shared with you when Melissa Shimkus presents "Discovering Your Female Ancestors" at the Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana Meeting on Wednesday, April 9th, at 6:30 pm in Meeting Room A. The Society welcomes guests, so join them and Melissa for this informative and entertaining session!

In your search for your family history, have you gone beyond just recording names, dates and places? It is interesting and worthwhile to try to flesh out other details of our ancestors’ lives, including such information as church membership, hobbies, club memberships, military service, residences, and occupations of our family members. Sometimes these details will provide clues that lead you to further records about your ancestor. All of this description about their lives helps to humanize the persons we are researching and will provide great reading for future generations perusing the family history we have left behind.

Beyond genealogical reasons, knowing our ancestor’s work history and occupation can have far-reaching health and legal ramifications. Several months ago, I helped a gentleman in The Genealogy Center to document his deceased father’s work history. We reviewed Fort Wayne City and Allen County Directories for the 1940s (we have a complete run of these directories for all years published) and made copies of his father’s entries, which listed his employer. In the course of our conversation, I learned that the patron had seen a notice in the Journal Gazette that former employees of the Joslyn Manufacturing and Supply Company (now defunct) were being sought by the United States Department of Labor in regard to benefits that may be due to them or their heirs because of hazardous work conditions. This company was located on Taylor Street in Fort Wayne, and in the 1940s manufactured rods made of uranium to be used in the atomic bomb. Many former employees, including this patron’s father, developed health problems after working with the uranium. In order to claim benefits, he explained to me that he was accumulating paperwork for the government: including proof of employment (from the directories); Social Security Administration Earnings Information; death certificate; medical records; and related records.

The patron recently returned to the library and gave me an update. He sent in the required paperwork and his mother, as surviving widow, was awarded compensation. He is now helping several of his dad’s buddies also gain benefits. The government is actively looking for other affected workers and their families. If you or your family may have been affected, while working at the Joslyn Manufacturing Company from 1943 to 1952, look into this program. For additional information, contact the Labor Department's Paducah Resource Center at 866-534-0599. The same program also has compensation available for workers in other energy-related fields. See the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act website for list of companies.

If this patron hadn’t known where his dad had worked, he might have missed out on legitimate money owed to his family. What might you learn about your ancestors’ occupations?

"The Evangelical Messenger" was a weekly newspaper published in the 19th and 20th centuries devoted to church news of The Evangelical Church in the United States. For many years, one of our great volunteers has devoted herself to indexing the obituaries appearing in The Messenger. These obituaries are rich in family information on the descendants, which may include maiden names, children, parents and residences, as well as much more, and are valuable to anyone searching members of this denomination. She has now sent yet another year (1937), which is now searchable! We thank her for this wonderful contribution!

As an aside, she has single-handedly entered 173,356 citations into this database over the last few years. This is a great example of what one person can accomplish and contribute to family history.

Historians who teach in academia and professional genealogists have had, at best, a peripheral and tenuous relationship. For much of the last half century, academics have viewed genealogists as amateurs whose work is provincial, at best. They viewed with derision the activities of earlier generations of genealogists whose interest in historical research was almost solely geared toward gaining admittance into hereditary societies. They also faulted genealogists for being so focused on specific families that they failed to place them into historical contexts and thereby give their work deeper meaning and relevance. This disdain continued into the 1970s, when many academics began to focus their own work on specific communities, using them as microcosms for understanding larger historical trends or the social and cultural dynamics of families. Works such as Kenneth Lockridge’s A New England Town: The First Hundred Years, Dedham, Massachusetts and John Demos’s A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony broke new ground for their use of local records (the same used by genealogists), but these and other studies did little to bridge the gulf between the two disciplines.

For its part, the field of genealogy underwent a major metamorphosis during the same period, becoming more professionalized and increasing the scope of what genealogists researched. All families, regardless of race, ethnicity, and social status, became subjects of scholarly interest, leaving the old stereotypes of WASP-ish exclusivism in the dust. While plenty of newcomers continued to produce work that lacked documentation, a new wave of genealogical scholars, both professional and amateur, began to apply new standards of documentation to their work. The Board for Certification of Genealogists established a means for granting professional credentials, and through its promotion of the Genealogical Proof Standard, it provided new benchmarks for evaluating genealogical evidence.

This evolution became evident in a variety of publications. Journals such as The American Genealogist, the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, The Genealogist, and the New England Historical and Genealogical Register began to publish articles that embodied high standards of documentation and deductive reasoning. Robert Charles Anderson and a team of other researchers produced the highly-acclaimed Great Migration series that raised the bar for all newly-published genealogical books. His accompanying Great Migration Newsletter offered advanced discussions of how to evaluate evidence at the New England town level, and in doing so he offered new insight about the process of English immigration that extended well beyond what had appeared in academic works.
The publication of Anderson’s first installment, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, proved to be a seminal event in getting academics to take notice of a professional genealogist’s work. The noted Puritan historian Roger Thompson of the University of East Anglia, hailed it as “invaluable to future researchers in many specialisms” and a “marvel of the age” for the new century; see Roger Thompson, review of The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, by Robert Charles Anderson et al, Journal of American Studies 30 (August 1996): 298-300, specifically 300. Gloria L. Main of the University of Colorado at Boulder echoed the praise, recognizing Anderson’s high evidentiary standards for his work. “Although anyone can practice genealogy, just as anyone can practice history, professional genealogists hew to stricter rules of evidence and more rigorous citation practices than even professional historians… As a consequence of the rigor and discipline that have come to mark professional genealogists’ efforts, their work furnishes excellent material for social historians, although they may not condone the ways historians use it;” see Gloria L. Main, review of The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, by Robert Charles Anderson et al, William and Mary Quarterly LIV (October 1997): 857-861, specifically 856.

While this recognition marks significant progress, a gulf endures between genealogists and academic historians. Some genealogists, while appreciating the macro-research of academics, have faulted some assessments of micro-evidence, alleging that some community studies have fallen into the trap of “same name, same person.” By failing to follow the Genealogical Proof Standard or accepting as evidence secondary works now considered of dubious value, these university-press studies have failed to meet professional genealogical standards. Many professional historians, while accepting the value of such works as the Great Migration, also admit that they do not read genealogical journals.

Other attempts at bridging the continuing divide have had only limited success. Conferences featuring both academic historians and professional genealogists as speakers have led to some conversations but have not paved the way for many interdisciplinary projects. If the gulf has begun to narrow, it remains a slow process. In a recent blog post, genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills, who has also written academic works, discusses the progress of the dialogue in an insightful article: Elizabeth Shown Mills, “QuickLesson 18: Genealogy? In the Academic World? Seriously?” Evidence Explained: Historical Analysis, Citation & Source Usage ( posted 9 January 2014).

What may bring the groups even closer together is the prospect of joint advocacy for record preservation and digitization. The rise of such websites such as Ancestry, Fold3, and FamilySearch, and the plethora of digitized records contained in them, while geared for genealogists, has also proven of value to academic historians. Many smaller websites with localized focuses have followed suit.

As proof of this trend, one might consider an article by Loren Schweninger, a professor emeritus in History at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, appearing recently in the William and Mary Quarterly, volume 71, no. 1 (January 2014): 35-62. Titled “Freedom Suits, African American Women and the Genealogy of Slavery,” the article explores how mixed-race descendants of free white women used the courts to win their freedom in antebellum Maryland. Significantly, Schweninger uses a number of sources found on websites traditionally associated with genealogists to develop his thesis, and the result is a well-researched study that could have found a home just as easily in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly.

Historians and genealogists can join forces by demanding that historical records be made more publicly accessible without restrictions and supporting efforts to make more documents available digitally. Indeed, records once stored behind archival walls and under the exclusive purview of academics are increasingly finding wider audiences through digitization, which can only help the research interests of both groups.

Libraries like The Genealogy Center at the ACPL can also play a role in bridging the divide by collecting the publications of both academic historians and genealogists and providing access to historical and genealogical websites. Both are fundamental components of our collection-development policy, and we encourage both historians and genealogists to use our resources.

The two groups have far to go to achieve full cooperation and mutual respect. But the gulf is not insurmountable. More articles like Schweninger’s will bode well for the future.

Have you seen the television commercial for insurance that asks, “Who’s the oldest person you’ve ever known”? My answer to that question is my great-aunt Thelma who just celebrated her 101st birthday! She attributes her longevity to clean living and laughter. Thelma is a selfless, giving person, who spent over 20 years caring for her bedridden husband in their home, rather than sending him to a nursing home. My childhood memories of her are of a jolly, happy, joking woman who, looking back on it, had a cross to bear, but I don’t remember ever hearing her complain or indulge in self-pity. She still plays the piano, by ear, never having had lessons, and played and sang “Tie Me To Your Apron Strings Again” and “Show Me the Way to Go Home” the last time I saw her. She inspires me!

I’ve known many others who were also long-lived, including my grandma Fannie, who lived to the ripe old age of 97. She was probably disappointed when she died, because she told us that she wanted to live forever, or at least until she was 115. Grandma loved to spoil her grandchildren, so she bought us lots of presents “just because,” fixed our favorite foods whenever we visited, and implored our parents not to punish us when we were naughty. Fannie’s best friend from childhood, Lottie, also lived well into her nineties. Grandma’s older sister, great-aunt Mary died at age 95. She told everyone at the end that she was grandma’s “younger” sister. That sure steamed grandma. Mary did have a bit of senility late in life, but we’re pretty sure, since the sisters never really got along, that she was fully aware that she was older than Fannie. Mary was so vain about her age, that on her tombstone, she arranged for there to be no birth date, just her name and the word, “Passed.”

What did these four grand-dames have in common? For one thing, they all lived in and around Bedford, Indiana most of their lives. For another, they were all born in the earliest years of the twentieth century, in a very different era and time. Why did they live so long? Was it the water? (Grandma believed her well water from deep out in the hills had special healing properties). Was it genes? (Only 2 of the 4 were related by blood). Was it good luck? We may never know. No matter the reason, we are thankful that we had them around for so long!

Who is the oldest person you’ve known? Or the oldest person you’ve uncovered in your family history research?